The athletic meeting was unknown to Homer: in historic times it is associated with religious festivals celebrated at definite periods at the holiest places in Greece. If the growth of the athletic festival was due to the athletic spirit of the race, its connexion with religion may be traced to those games with which the funeral of the Homeric chieftain was celebrated. Though the origin of the great festivals is overgrown with a mass of late and conflicting legends in which it is difficult to distinguish truth from fiction, there is no reason for discrediting the universal tradition of their funeral origin, confirmed as it is by survivals in the ritual of the festivals, by the testimony of the earliest athletic art, and by later custom.[27] So we may conjecture that these games, originally celebrated at the actual funeral, tended like other funeral rites to become periodical, and as ancestor-worship developed into hero-worship became part of the cult of heroes, which seems to have preceded throughout Greece the worship of the Olympian deities. When the latter superseded the earlier heroes, they took over these games together with the sanctuaries and festivals of the older religion. The custom of celebrating funerals with games and contests is not confined to Greece. Among the funeral scenes that decorate the walls of Etruscan tombs we see depicted chariot-races, horse-races, boxing, wrestling, and other athletic sports, together with contests of a more brutal nature.[28] From the Etruscans the custom spread to the Romans, who borrowed from the same people their gladiatorial games, which were likewise possibly of funeral origin. Funeral games are found in Circassia, in the Caucasus, among the Khirgiz, and yet further afield in Siam and in North America.[29] But the most instructive example for our purpose is furnished by the old Irish fairs, which lasted from pagan times down to the beginning of the last century.[30] These fairs, founded in memory of some departed chieftain, took place at stated intervals commonly in the neighbourhood of the ancient burial-place. Thus the triennial fair of Carman, near Wexford, was instituted in fulfilment of the dying charge of Garman “as a fair of mourning to bear his name for ever.” These fairs, which lasted several days, and to which people of all classes flocked from every part of Ireland, and even from Scotland, furnished an opportunity for the transaction of a variety of business public and private. Laws were promulgated, councils and courts were held, marriages were arranged and celebrated.